Winter wonderland

So, it's been an amazing week. Skiing - both the cross-country and downhill varieties, skating (fell on my face), snowshoeing with Chrissa (someone ended up neck deep in snow when she decided we should head off-piste), dogsledding, and a trip to the spa in a snowstorm. I need to break out my sled from Costco as well. I have also been engaging in an inordinate amount of shovelling and scraping just to be able to drive my car. but what keeps surprising me, over and over, is how well I have adjusted to life in wintertime here. And it's not just because of alllll the merino...I don't even want winter to end because I like doing stuff outside SO much. I really didn't know I was this person, but I am glad I am.

Grammatically questionable.

You know what? You are right. "Freeze raining" actually makes some sense as a verb, so I will stop correcting you.

Storm!

This latest storm has been a first for me - I think in the last two years I missed the storms themselves because I travel a lot for work. But this was the first moment where I really looked around and felt a pang of recognition from my childhood (I spent my first seven years in Michigan). When I first considered moving here, I was a little concerned about the weather, since my mother had to basically flee Michigan under cover of darkness rather than live through another winter. But I have something that she didn't...24-hour access to cut-price merino wool long underwear at Sierra Traders!

A tip

When you send someone a video of Ricky Gervais creating Daniel Radcliffe fanfic on the fly, it will not be funny if they don't know what fan fic is.

Cultural lessons through the magic of Hollywood films

So, H and I watched "While You Were Sleeping" tonight. It is one of my favorite guilty pleasures, and H was a good sport to watch it as he's not the biggest fan of fomulaic Hollywood movies. A couple of interesting observations were made though... There is a scene where Jack Callaghan is telling his father that he doesn't want to take over his business, and this is a Big Deal. H noted that this is a common plot device in US movies, but does not resonate even slightly with the Quebec market.

Towards the end, H started getting a tiny bit disturbed because he actually thought Snadra Bullock was going to end up with the wankknob brother. He started earnestly telling me that he didn't really think that Lucy should marry Peter, because she seemed much more suited to his brother, Jack. I thought it was nice that he was so unfamiliar with the hamhanded psychological manipulation of Hollywood films that he didn't realize that he was being hit in the back of the head with a plot-shaped shovel.

We are now watching Taking Lives, mostly because it was shot across from H's old flat. But the Quebecois characters in the movie are hilariously badly written...all played by French actors, and doing what I would say are stereotypical French behaviours. It is clearer all the time how very different the Quebecois are from anyone else, up to and including the French.

I am kind of a big deal around here.

H and I laugh a lot because there is something about me that makes strangers smile at me and talk to me an unusual amount. I think it is partially because I often smile at strangers. If someone is walkng towards me and there is no one else around, I usually make eye contact and smile. I guess I am part southern. And in stores, especially on the south shore of QC where foreigners are more of an anomaly, if folks hear me speaking English they are interested to know my story. We joke that I am a pretty big deal in the Home Depot in St Romuald.

But sometimes the attention is not as positive, and I notice people just flat out staring in, while not an unfriendly way, more of a "look at the odd zoo animal" way. One day I mentioned it to H, asking if maybe I had something on my face, and he pointed out that I am in general extremely loud, especially in comparison to the locals. And as well my loudness was being broadcast in a foreign language. Well, yes, you do have a point there.

The awesomeness of winter part 1

Watching girls trying to walk on black ice in cheap stilettos.